Lincoln National Forest - Fall Colors Hike

 Another awesome fall colors hike in  the Lincoln National Forest's Sacramento district!  I had thought about going to the Gila's Black Range on Sunday (10/24/21) but it still seemed a little hot for the lower elevations there and of course the mountain tops are still very open to the sun because of the Silver Fire in 2013. So at the last minute I spied a nameless canyon on Google Earth near Cloudcroft that looked to have deciduous trees lining its west side. Off we went. It was little rough on the Bailey Ridge Road ( FR 206 ) but the distance we drove on it was relatively short compared to many hikes we access with dirt or gravel forest roads. We parked at a large meadow camping area, then headed across the road to a saddle and then went steeply down the other side following a trail of sorts. There were a few berms along the way, so I believe it may have been an old jeep road that the Forest Service closed. It has been many years since any kind of vehicle has been down in the canyon.  It also seems to be currently free from livestock grazing, although we did see horses grazing in the meadows along the forest road ( FR 206 ) on the way out, so maybe they get in there from time to time. They may be wild, I'm not sure.

 In the first meadow there were aspens and maples in brilliant color. We had seen a few on our drive back from Ruidoso last weekend, but I would say we were still within peak week, which arrived fairly late this year. On down the canyon there was just more and more color with the maples, in red, yellow and orange some  intensely back lit by the sun, especially thick on the western slopes.

  

Rising above the deciduous trees were many  truly tall and wide firs and ponderosa pines.  At times their enormous fallen comrades blocked our way as we walked. There was an old barbed wire and metal post fence that had been knocked down by deadfall in enough places to step over down to negotiate early on, but after that there was a mostly obvious trail to follow all the way down to  FR 162. Some of the trail we were following was kept intact by wildlife, but it had at  one time been a human engineered one with sawn logs in  several places and oddly enough even a small bridge ( what it was  built over I don't know, as there was not a lick of water in the canyon).

Down and down we went with the trail getting steeper and steeper as we did. In all the drop was probably close to 800 feet with the total round trip distance of our hike around 2.6 miles. My goal was to make it  to La Luz Canyon and FR 162 , which  we did. On the way back I had had the notion of using  a long abandoned road on the east side of the canyon to loop back around to our parking area. We had seen the both ends of the road on our walk in, but on the way out it just seemed sun drenched and an unattractive alternative. Instead we rested on a huge stump left from logging days before returning exactly the way we came in.

 Chipmunks scurried on downed logs. Escaping the attention of  my Scotties for the most part. Ravens ( or crows?) called among the trees. A few small birds flitted in  branches too quickly to identify them. That was it for wildlife. We thought we should have seen more given the wild and secretive nature of this canyon. Several years ago I had given thought to do Devils Canyon, just to the east of where we hiked, but a wide swath cut through the forest there for power lines put a damper on my plans. I may still go have a look there one day, but the canyon of this delightful day, where the weather was cool enough for long shirt sleeves, but not so cool as  to need a jacket, where the breezes were just enough to send a few autumn leaves tumbling to the trail where they gathered thickly enough for my  short-legged dogs to rustle as they went through, this canyon, with its snags and downed timber, and green bottom land, this canyon which we hiked in perfect peace and solitude  so intense that it gave me a chuckle to think of  crowds descending on the maple rich canyons in the Manzanos so close to Albuquerque. This canyon, just one of many short upper tributaries of  La Luz Canyon was a remedy and more than enough for us.

                                                 

 A forest spirit